Рыбин, Ю. В. Советские асы на Харрикейнах в годы Второй Мировой Войны / Юрий Рыбин . – [Б. м. ] : Osprey Publishing, 2012. – 97 с. : ил., портр. – Англ. яз.

C HA PTE R FO UR 64 o f enemy aircraft that was comprised o f seven Ju 87s escorted by six Bf 109s and four Bf 110s. Upon returning from the sortie Capt Babiy and Snr Lt Loginov each reported downing a Ju 87. These successes in the skies over Murmansk in early July would prove to be the last for 78th IAP, as the number o f combat-ready foreign-built aircraft was declining with each passing day. The Hurricanes in particular suffered from the dust and sand encountered on the airfields from which they operated, these conditions reducing the service lives of their Merlin XX engines to around 20 to 30 hours when run without dust filters. To ensure that the surviving Hurricanes were used more effectively, the Northern Fleet command was forced to temporarily transfer all the British-made fighters to a single regiment, 78th IAP, in early July. Even so, the regiment was seldom capable of fielding more than eight to ten combat-worthy aircraft on any one day. On 22 July, for example, there were only nine serviceable fighters out of 50 on the combined strength of the regiment’s three squadrons. A similar situation persisted through to the end of 1942 among the fighter units based on the Kola Peninsula. The offensive capacity o f the Hurricane regiments deteriorated markedly during the second half o f 1942, and this situation was reflected in the memoirs of the air defence pilots of 768th IAP of 122nd IAD. In a letter to the author dated 12 March 1985, ace Georgiy Ivanovich Kozlov described his first battle as a Hurricane pilot in the Murmansk area in the summer of 1942; ‘There were a great many aircraft from both sides in a German raid on the port and on Murmansk itself. There were only a handful of us in Hurricanes, however, due to a lack of serviceable aircraft. My squadronmates went after the enemy bombers, but failed to warn me that they were doing so. In the heat of battle I didn’t immediately notice that I was alone at my height, although the German fighter escorts did. This Hurricane from an unidentified regiment forced-landed following engine failure. The main cause of the problems that afflicted the aircraft's Merlin X X engine in 1942 was the fighter's operation from sandy airfields without dust filters All the Hurricane IIs supplied by No 151 Wing RAF directly to 78th IAP w ere equipped with chin-mounted dust filters when they arrived at Vaenga-1 airfield When operating from sandy frontline Soviet airfields without a dust filter (as in this case), the service life of a brand new Merlin X X engine could be reduced from 240 hours to as few as 40 hours. Indeed, in some cases these engines failed after little more than 30 hours of flying © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com